


Heir of Fire

by sprx77



Series: but few as tenacious and enduring [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Naruto
Genre: And knows that they didn't have the chance to have a kid but if they did it would be him, F/F, F/M, Gen, Harry Potter is like the reincarnation of Naruto /and/ Sasuke, He remembers being Naruto and remembers being Sasuke, Headcanon that Harry is the unholy combination of Uzumaki and Uchiha, Headcanon that Lily is somehow an Uzumaki descendant, Headcanon that the Potters had an Uchiha somewhere otherwise how do you explain the hair, Inspired by Stormborn by the fabulous Blackkat, It would be Harry, Just saying if you see something you recognize that's where it unintentionally came from, Like if they had a kid, M/M, Multi, Okay so this is kind of a reincarnation fic, Though it didn't go the same direction, but not?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-02
Updated: 2016-07-01
Packaged: 2018-03-04 22:42:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3094658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sprx77/pseuds/sprx77
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(See the tags.)<br/>Harry Potter knew he was different long before he knew he was a wizard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Manin-- Memory

For as long as he can remember, Harry Potter has dreamed.

Not the same dream, over and over again, but the same lifetimes. He grows up and a blonde haired child grows parallel to him, always running, always smiling.

The city-- village-- is always the same. It’s beautiful and breathtaking. Trees surround it and the buildings aren’t quite tall enough to match. It’s full of familiar faces, still as small as he is, but he sees them and thinks:  _precious_.

The blonde little boy has blue eyes, brimming with determination and hope, and he’s full to bursting with energy 100% of the time.

When he wakes, he stares at the dark ceiling of his cupboard and feels a sadness so deep and aching in his chest he has no name for it. Harry has never been so free to run wherever he wants to go, has only been outside a few precious times in his life, and thinks of the clear blue skies and green trees with thoughts that begin with _I want_ and inevitably end with him clenching his small fists in the threadbare blanket he curls up with.

 

Black hair and black eyes and Harry isn’t educated enough to know any sort of stigma that goes along with that combination of dark features; he sees a small boy with laughing eyes and happy smiles and has no words for the innocence.

When he dreams of the dark-haired little boy he doesn’t see the village as often, nor the trees; instead he sees more dark-haired people, women and men, all with a kind smile and kind words for him. He sees red and white fans on blue backgrounds and knows, for the first time, the love of a mother and father and a clan full of aunts and uncles and cousins.

Perhaps his favorite of all is the boy not yet an adult, but closer than the nameless children playing in the distance, who lives with him. The dark-haired boy doesn’t get attention from his parents every minute of every day-- though Harry, who has never received such attention, barely notices the lapses-- and yet the older boy always has a ready smile and waiting arms.

Harry lets himself get caught up in the happiness of having a family.

The phantom sensation of two fingers brushing against his forehead lingers for days.

 

He isn’t aware, for the longest time, that his dreams are abnormal. How can he? The very second rule in the Dursley household is _don’t ask questions_. Every scrap of knowledge he picks up is painstakingly gained.

As a result, when he finally-- _finally_ \-- gets to go to school, he absorbs everything like a sponge. He learns with time how to walk the line between ‘bad enough to be an embarrassment’ and ‘good enough to out-do Dudley and earn a beating’ with regards to his grades. It doesn’t take long with the proper motivation.

Still, Harry learns.

His papers and tests don’t reflect the knowledge he sucks in so greedily, of course, but what has that got to do with anything? The relief of being able to _understand_ things-- understand, even when he doesn’t ask questions, because Harry knows better to try despite when all the other children do because breaking Rule Number 2 means pain, hunger, darkness-- overshadows everything else.

(There’s always been a dichotomy between the rules for _Harry_ and the rules for _Dudley_ , always, and Harry knows this to be the way of the world: other children like Dudley, by virtue of not being _freaks_ , can ask all the questions they want.)

(Harry has never managed to isolate the traits that differentiate him from Dudley and the other children, but it never stops him from trying. He’ll stick to every rule, be _good_ , and maybe one day he’ll be set free from them).

 

When he’s old enough to reach the stove he is deemed old enough to start cooking for his relatives twice or thrice a day (depending on the day of the week) and thus old enough to be outside of the house without supervision; he is summarily thrust outside when there’s daylight.

The Dursley’s are more than happy enough to miss his company and Harry-- Harry discovers the public library.

Reading has never been easy for Harry. The words are too small and cramped, hard to make out, but the other children manage just fine so he muddles along. Harry places another tally on the list of things that must make him a _freak_ and resolves to do better.

He learns much faster with his solitary reading, even if his pace is slow and his nose almost brushes the words, and the number of questions he gets answered without asking is entirely worth it.

(When he has enough prior knowledge of what dreams are and how other people experience them, he knows they too are something that make him a freak. Fortunately, he has no idea how to make them stop; he’s not sure he’d live through losing them.)

(Is it still bad if no one has to know?)

(Maybe, just maybe, this one thing can be okay.)

(It has to be.)

 

Sasuke and Naruto-- for those are their names-- follow Harry as he grows.

The older-but-not-an-adult boy who looks like Sasuke has a name. It’s Itachi.

Harry learned the word _brother_ from questions the teacher asked other students and looked it up in the library.

Itachi brushes hair from Sasuke’s forehead and holds him when he cries.

 

Naruto doesn’t have anyone like that.

He lives alone, for all the he smiles, and Harry feels echoes of his own feelings in the dreams because he knows what it’s like looking in on other families but not being a part of them.

He doesn’t learn the word from school, this time, but the library books tell him anyway.

The word is: orphan.

It means not having parents, and Harry wonders if it applies to him, too.

(He knows it does. The Dursley’s are relatives, not family, and the difference was beat into him the first time he made the mistake of suggesting otherwise).

 

The school Naruto and Sasuke attend is much different than the one Harry goes to.

Harry goes to class during the day and enjoys the freedom from his cupboard and the things he learns from the teacher. He looks at the homework Dudley turns in and is proud when the work Harry’s done comes back with perfect marks.

(His own homework is purposefully lesser, done after Dudley’s, and Harry is getting better at gauging how many problems to get wrong to maintain the constant difference.)

At night he dreams of a different school. Men and women in flak jackets teach him about a power called _chakra_ and how to harness it.

(Harry learns this, too.)

 

Most of the dreams _stay_ dreams.

Harry knows they’re only okay so long as no one knows about them. He can’t let on that he has them. Doing the things that Naruto and Sasuke and the other- _dream_ -children can do would be a dead give away. Harry checked and no one _else_ , of all the other _normal, not-freaks, Dudley_ children, can do those things either.

So it’s not okay to try the things he learns from them in the waking world.

It’s not okay at all.

(Behind a school building one day, when no one is watching, he picks up a leaf and remembers what he learned the night before. His hand trembles as he presses it to his forehead.)

(His breath stops when it stays.)

 

Sometimes the dreams follow him into reality.

The times are rare. Few and far between.

He remembers each of them with painstaking clarity.

 

Accidentally climbing the roof had terrified him. He tells himself later that the wind must have caught him, or something _normal_ , because he didn’t weave any handsigns. He was being _good_.

But after some time-- and the time stretched onwards, for hours, because who would notice him missing?-- his breathing evened out and he forgot about the punishment surely awaiting him.

The fear ebbed away and was replaced by something else as he took in the sight of the setting sun on the far-off horizon, warm-hued colors painting the buildings until they resembled a different city, the village of his dreams. Being up high was of no concern just then, as the wind picked up and it felt like coming _home_.

(When it ruffled his hair, he just let his eyes fall closed to enjoy it.)

(There was no explaining away the ghostly hand he felt on his shoulder.

 

He didn’t turn around to dispel the illusion.)


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry has an arguably worse childhood than both Naruto and Sasuke-- at least they lived alone instead of with assholes masquerading as family.
> 
> Dreams turn to daydreams turn to memories turn to a little ninja who is utterly done with being locked in a cupboard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Very rough draft.

Being part-- half? A third?-- Sasuke and not having an older brother is approximately nine hundred times stranger than being part Sasuke and part Naruto in the first place. _Itachi_ is such a shaping influence of a whole part of him that that influence is almost a whole other part on its own. (And then where would he be?

One part Harry, one part Naruto, one part Sasuke, one part Sasuke’s brother issues?

He has enough space and perspective to laugh at-- well, himself.

And his issues.

The issues he experienced that one time when he was Sasuke?)

 

 

It is easier to breathe, trapped in a cupboard, with no love and no prospect of love or acceptance, with Naruto’s memories of gaining precious people to ease the burden in his chest.

Shadows pool in the corners and on the sloping roof, deeper in some places than others, broken up from being a monochrome expanse of blackness only by the dim light from the crack under the door.

The locked door.

_I did it then, I can do it now._

Only--

Naruto lived alone, for all that he ran through the streets with proclamations on his lips and ambition in every step. He walked in footsteps greater than his own, his own footfalls growing to match, until he filled the shoes of his predecessors.

Naruto lived in a village that (mostly) hated him.

He didn’t sleep there.

 

 

Harry-at-age-eight, with the perspective of two mostly-blurry lifetimes, decides he will _not_ stay in the small-dark cupboard of a house that has four bedrooms, with an aunt who looks nothing like him who throws frying pans at his head.

This house is not Konoha. He would not spend his days trying to impress the people who lived here. Family is not meant to be won over. Family are not hateful villagers.

There are words for households who treat children as such. There is a name for children who find themselves in such households. (The word is _abusive_ and the name is _rescued_ because Konoha does not suffer such atrocities.)

(Child soldiers, yes. Assassins, yes. Shinobi commit some of the greatest crimes. But Orochimaru would have been killed had he not fled for raising a hand against a child of the Leaf.)

 

 

Harry-at-age-six knows what family is supposed to be like (a district of dark-haired people, smiles all, ready with kind words or treats and every soul in the compound one who would fight to the death to keep him safe).

The Dursleys are not family.

 

 

Harry-at-age-seven knows what it’s like to have a family and lose it. Knows betrayal and heartache and the kind of bone-deep emotions that scar under the skin. (He remembers Itachi crying and apologizing and goes through a couple of numb ~~days~~  weeks that no one notices before--.)

 

 

Harry-at-age-eight decides to leave.

The Dursleys will never love him.

They call him _freak, boy, burden_.

Naruto lived alone but had been once used to such.

Sasuke, as a child, knew he could tell his mother or father about any maligning of his character. They would solve that problem faster than most chunin-- except Shisui, of course-- could shunshin.

Not that it would ever get to that point. When he was Sasuke, Itachi tended to solve his problems and mend his hurts, the perfect older brother. For instance, if anyone in his family had ever lost their mind and thrown a frying pan at his head with the honest intent to hurt him, Itachi would have somehow swooped in and fixed everything.

Naruto thought to one day gain the respect of the village. He might have been justified in doing so, actually. The framework for becoming Hokage was: graduate academy, make genin, advance through the ranks. He’d already been in the academy.

For Naruto, there was hope that Konoha would grow to respect-maybe-love him.

From the lives he’s lived before, Harry doesn’t have any lingering naivety about his relatives.

Instead, he has years of learning how to kill-- how to throw knives accurately, to point out kill shots on a body diagram, to make poisons from plants-- and years still more of combat lessons and strategy sessions, a burning source of energy flowing through not his veins but his tenketsu.

 

 

What Naruto dismissed in favor of pranks and stealth and survival, Sasuke memorized from textbooks, tearing through tome after tome in his quest for strength.

 

 

(He knows for a fact that he can survive on his own. Being alone hurts but not as much as being _hated_ by the people who are supposed to love him.)

 

 

(Harry once, lifetimes ago, got in a fight with himself over which was a more valid form of suffering--

 _I've lost everyone I love_ or

_I've never had anyone to love me_

and, looking at both of his points,

from both perspectives he's lived

concludes that  _I'm unloved by living relatives_

takes the cake.)

 

 

A Harry without knowledge from his other lives-- experiences just as real as his own that go from being only dreams to daydreams to memories-- might have suffered through it, used to the yelling and the quiet and the dark and the loneliness. He would have, in fact, not known any other way of living.

Harry _with_ the knowledge from his other lives-- experiences _just as real to him_ as his own-- Harry-at-eight-- Harry who easily remembers living on his own-- can’t take it any longer.

 

 

The knowledge comes to him freely as he leaves the playground at school one day. He would have left his cupboard last night, but worries of discovery stopped him. Why be discovered by his aunt in the morning when he could leave midday and not be missed until late at night, if then?

Harry leaves without anyone noticing. It is a feat born more of skill on his part than on a schoolteacher’s negligence.

He is, after all, a ninja.

And it’s not like living on his own at eight years old is something he _hasn’t_ done before. Once. Twice.

The third time will be the charm.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry Potter dons the guise of an adult ninja and runs around London for a month or two learning the differences between this world and the one in his memories the best way he knows how.
> 
> He hasn't met her yet, but in the (probable) words of his future best friend, "When in doubt, go to the library."
> 
> Or: A young Harry arms himself with knowledge and delves into a bit of introspection about his situation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tell me if there are any bits you dislike or like, specifically. I'd love to know. 
> 
> Also, this chapter is just a bit longer. 1 is a bit of an introduction. 2 is the prelude to change. This one reveals the first and foundation of the many changes Harry's strange memories bring to his life.
> 
> Again, a rough draft.

Harry Potter dreams. He dreams nearly every night with perfect clarity and recall-- if not perfect sense.

Each scene is vivid and real, a memory rather than a subconscious jaunt through adventure dreamland, but the memories are not in order.

He is five and sunny-haired and runs through the earthen streets of a earth-toned village.

He is five and dark-haired and he dogs the steps, laughing, of older boys with red-white-home-family fans stitched onto their clothing.

He was Naruto once, running across rooftops and playing pranks. He was Sasuke another night, plotting to ambush Itachi to demand training. The memories of the early days stay with him during waking hours.

Harry remembers one day as Naruto and one day as Sasuke for every day he lives as Harry Potter, himself--as far as he can figure.

The years he lived are as fresh in his memory as the years he’s lived this time around. He remembers being six and ending up on top of the school building.

He remembers being six and having a cake, candles, and smiles from his parents.

He remembers the time he turned six and the Sandaime Hokage bought him Ichiraku Ramen for the first time, the next day.

It’s routine.

However, while he lives parallel to his past lives in terms of long-term memory recall-- 

_ \--protect the head and throat in all combat situations, Iryou-nin can only heal so much _ \--

\-- he dreams of things far to come.

The dreams know no limit. What good would they be if he only knew what happened as it happened, time-wise? He’d have to repeat his mistakes over and over again. Now that he knows everything that happens actually happened, he pays attention.

For instance, Harry is only eight-and-a-half but knows he was Hokage once.

He’s lived through significant events, like learning how to make shadow clones, even though he doesn’t remember the details of literally every day and their happenings before and after.

Yet.

He remembers the bell test with Kakashi-sensei from two separate perspectives, which he supposes might, maybe be confusing.

If he didn’t also remember it from the dozens of perspectives of his shadow clones, as well.

Assimilating memories from more than one point of view was old hat for someone who could be his own army and remember each clone’s actions.

And words.

And thoughts.

And figure their reconnaissance--  _ it means ‘information gathering’ _ ,  _ Naruto you idiot! _ \-- into plans on the fly, mid-fight.

By one definition of the words, he’s spent his entire life living off of multiple sets of memories.

It’s just not the only life he remembers.

Did shadow clones count as ‘lives’? Not in the traditional sense, of course, but once he mastered the technique to such a degree that each clone required a kill-shot, not just a random hit, in order to pop...

There was no sense of ‘dying’ when a clone popped. Mostly just very sharp, but even more brief, pain and the phrase “oh, shit.”

Harry couldn’t remember either of his selves actually dying.

Should he be grateful? He doubted very much, with all the battles and all-out war, that either Naruto or Sasuke managed to die peacefully or of natural causes.

Twice he lay dying next to his best friend, once with his left arm missing and once with his right, but they survived that fight and many more besides.

The duality of many experiences is, again, dwarfed next to the sheer number of clone memory transfers.

Harry Potter is neither a child running on Konoha’s rooftops nor a child squared away in the Uchiha district.

Harry is, in fact, henged to look nothing like a child at all.

His chakra reserves, he’d been surprised to find, were rather small, but only if he compared them to his peak-levels-- his adult levels in Naruto’s lifetime, though Sasuke was no slouch in that department.

If he had to be limited to a child’s body, then a child’s body with huge chakra coils was as good as anyone could get. It was not unlike his body as Naruto when he was a fresh genin. 

That is, enough to make several dozen shadow clones.

Jinchuuriki craziness aside, Uzumaki traditionally had enormous chakra reserves. Was that a DNA thing? Was he still, physically, an Uzumaki?

For that matter, did the bloodline limit he had as Sasuke, rather instrumental to most of his techniques, come with this body?

Would he awaken the Sharingan? Did his chakra transfer with him from both lives as he reincarnated?

Henged to look like a slightly older asian man, he was investigating deeper into what he knew to be true. He’d been taught this life, in the children’s classes, about the geography of the world. About the-- granted, abridged-- history of it.

And it did not match up.

Well, to be fair, he’d already learned English and to read and write before he realized his dreams were anything like true, so it was more that what he later learned from the memories didn’t match up to his preconceived notions of the world.

The history books said nothing about the hidden villages or, even, the Elemental Nations.

How did reincarnation work, anyway? Was he in the far future, the far past, another dimension entirely? The technology was mostly the same, if a bit more advanced, and who’s to say the world didn’t go from electricity and television to space travel and internet in the time it took him to be reborn?

Certainly, according to this world’s history, the civilian countries had made the leap in as little as a few decades. Although, granted, they’d only  _ had _ electricity and the like for about a century.

Most damning of all, and lending the most credence to the theory of a whole new world, or close-a-freaking-’nuff, was the sheer lack of mention of chakra, anywhere.

Perhaps he was in a separate timeline where the Sage never brought the gift of chakra to most of those he met. But, if  _ that _ were-- somehow-- mind-bogglingly true--

It would mean--

Harry blinked slowly, looking up from several encyclopedias at once.

_ Surely _ not--

His brain wanted to resist the notion of hundreds of years of history erased, an alternate version where society wasn’t built by the deeds and armies of ninja, but if it  _ was _ a chakra-less world--

It meant Harry was the only one who could use chakra.

Immediately, like his past lives were clones on his shoulders given contrasting perspectives, one the proverbial angel and the other the devil, he was gripped by two conflicting urges.

The ambition and determination from years of working to higher and higher goals said:

_ I must take over this frail world and become its new God _ .

The other knee-jerk response, habit leftover from his lifetime as advisor and content commander, reflexively snapped:

_ Dear God, Naruto, anything but that _ .

Harry stopped to laugh.

A librarian looked at him funny.

There is maybe, slightly, a bit of duality on the  _ personality _ front if not the ‘abundance of contrasting memories’ one.

As Naruto he’d been a bit of an idiot-savant until someone-- Jiraiya-- actually took the time to teach him basic logic and grammar as preparation to fuinjutsu. Editing manuscripts was a task like any other of the subtle training methods his teacher gave him. He had a good, natural eye for strategy that helped with things like pranks and the unpredictable fighting style and tactics he’d become famous for.

As Sasuke, he’d had a lot more formal instruction.  _ Genius _ they’d called him, and he’d scoffed. It was mostly how he worked both his body and his brain to a would-be early grave to fight Itachi.

Come to think of it, he felt relatively minor pain thinking about his brother. The massacre was a wound that still hurt and likely always would, but the knowledge he’d had for the duration of his adult life about the truth behind the slaughter-- and confronting his literal demons re: the animated corpse of his dead brother-- had left him with a bit of peace and understanding.

He was much more likely to hug his brother than hit him, should the need arise, and in his other, blonder life he’d not much cared about Itachi, other than as the missing nin related to his best friend’s trauma.

If this was another world, did Naruto and Sasuke come into existence at all? Had civilian versions of his past lives run around? Was he reborn into an alternate timeline/world/dimension or was it some freak, mangekyo sharingan accident?

If he was, by whatever power, in a world where the Sage had never brought chakra to humanity, did things continue on as normal without chakra or ninja? Did that butterfly effect make it so that no one he’d recognize was born at all, none of the billions of sperm breaching the right eggs? If the same ancestors even got together at all without ninja clans?

This! This is why he’d never really understood his dad’s notes on the flying thunder god technique. Or at least, not how the frankly genius of a man managed to recreate and reinvent it from just  _ hearing  _ about the Nidaime’s technique. The different aspects of time and space that could go into a time/space seal were complicated to the nth degree. Time travel, dimensional travel-- there were so many variables involved. Hiraishin just dealt with the ‘space’ component, primarily, although-- of course-- spacetime was in itself one intertwined concept--

Hiraishin was complicated enough.

He couldn’t imagine, was the point, of all the little nuances that could affect  _ time _ . And that’s what it would be like, trying to calculate if anyone he knew still existed with such a fundamental change to the early history of the world--  _ if _ that’s what happened.

None of his ninja family could have existed, or all of them could have-- insomuch as a person with all the right DNA looked and thought like his friends, minus the ability to wield chakra-- or only some of them.

Itachi could have never taken a breath on this rock, or he could at this moment be running a tea shop, or he could have reincarnated as he, Harry (Naruto/Sasuke) had. Maybe everyone reincarnated once they died, or reincarnated into this specific timeline, but no one had dream/memory of their past lives.

For that matter, was it normal to have two past lives instead of one?

Technically speaking, if he has one he probably has  _ dozens _ , and only remembers the most recent one-- Naruto and Sasuke respectively-- but if his current situation truly is a rebirth instead of some freak accident with a jutsu or bloodline or seal he hasn’t remembered yet, if he’s really one soul being cleansed between lifetimes, or whatever, then he could have been the first Hokage or something before he was Naruto, and whatever happened to a soul or consciousness between reincarnations wiped the memories clean. And then someone else before Hashirama, and so on, etc.

Possibly that function that  _ usually _ wiped memories between incarnations malfunctioned for  _ this  _ cycle, for some reason, God knows why.

Hypothetically speaking, if Harry  _ had _ been the first Hokage, would he also have been Madara? Another interesting bit of dissonance as he thinks ‘Sasuke, my best friend, would hit me for implying that’ right on the heels of an indignant ‘Naruto, you dumbass, I wasn’t  _ Madara _ .’

The expression on his face must have been truly entertaining; actually, he kind of wanted to see it, at least as much as he wanted  _ nothing of the kind _ , both impulses because he was henged into the spitting image of his father-- the inconspicuous, dark-haired asian, not the highlighter blonde, bright-coloured asian-- and any expression so close to laughter would be odd in the extreme.

Finally, after more thinking in circles-- 

If nobody else had dual past lives, did that imply, if the existence of souls was indeed part of the reincarnation process, that before Sasuke and Naruto he’d been one soul-- as he was, presumably, now--but they’d gotten split up for that one reincarnation cycle, into two separate bodies. Had he been his own, literal soulmate?--

He stood to leave.

He’d gathered several huge books off the shelves, all of them related to history or geography or various encyclopedias with more esoteric facts, and laid them over the course of several hours across a large table.

Several wooden chairs ducked their fronts under the sides of it, with his the only one pulled back and occupied for most of the day. Now he was, predictably, the only one in the main room, though others had come and gone. It was, after all, two p.m. on a Tuesday.

This library was one of several small, out of the way public ones he’d found around London. Amazing what a lone shinobi could do in an unprotected city. Not all his genjutsu-- abysmal as Naruto, fantastic as Sasuke, middling but satisfactory as Harry-- were tied to the sharingan.

It was a simple matter to take what he needed from the unsuspecting populace. In such a big city he need not even hit the same place twice. Instead of robbing people blind, Harry simply walked into the biggest superstores he could find, grabbed a bag or two of groceries, and  _ shunshin _ ’d out. What a mum and dad store might miss, ASDA, the lovely Walmart branches everywhere in London, would hardly notice.

Stomach growling, he made a note to go by another one soon.

A little sign proclaimed he should leave the books out for the librarian to put up, but a quick glance confirmed she’d meandered off into another room behind the counter. Harry, recognizing the organization system easily enough even if he hadn’t memorized, with all the practice of two paranoid lifetimes, where he pulled them down from, grabbed them all in one towering armful.

As he restacked, he thought, the absentminded process made easier by the fact that he didn’t have to cover up any short-limbed movements. His henge was the one he’d developed, or redeveloped, completely by accident as a kid.

The solid henge was actually an A-level technique, frequented by jounin for stealth or long-term missions, and involved a single large expenditure of chakra to activate. A single large expenditure of chakra was necessary to change back, as well, and complete knowledge of how you wanted to change, but between the two stages there was no chakra cost.

Possibly because there wasn’t really stage one and stage two. It was a permanent change, but a repeatable one. Generally speaking, he left his organs the hell alone and shaped his outsides very carefully to superficially resemble who he wanted to look like.

It was dangerous in that if you didn’t know exactly what you were like before, you couldn’t change exactly back, but most ninja were extremely conscious of all aspects of their body. It was the tool with which they worked for a living, after all. A ninja’s body was his weapon as much as any steel.

Easy to add boob-looking bits of flesh to his torso for the Sexy jutsu. Not so easy to change organs, so he left them alone. Fortunately one subconsciously expects to be in a certain shape, so focusing on what you’re used to and letting your chakra flow along those drawn lines is all one  _ really _ needs to change back, except in special cases, notably those wherein a long-term operative has to assume a form for months or years and they get used to it.

Not a problem for Harry, especially at the moment.

Having real, adult-sized arms is much more expedient than having illusionary adult-sized arms and not being able to actually reach the highest shelves.

A ninja’s body was his equipment, sharpened to a razor edge for work and jobs. Harry knew that from both lives. In his own body, he was fairly malnourished-- a cold, honest assessment he’d made weeks ago when categorizing his weaknesses and figuring out where he was, development-wise, versus where he needed to be-- and as a result, short for his age.

However, with henge, or at least the solid henge, that was hardly a problem. He couldn’t add on more muscle specifically to his Harry Potter base frame, or anything so drastic, not without Sakura’s knowledge of the body’s system, but he hadn’t  _ always _ been a small Harry Potter.

He’d lived in this body for years, but for a lifetime he’d been in Sasuke’s body, and constant, paranoid awareness of every inch of that body gave him easy familiarity, even when he changed his face and hair to match his father’s.

Sasuke when he was nineteen looked a bit more threatening, and it was this form that Harry chose to adopt when he left the library, the beginnings of an idea bouncing around in his brain.

He was, after all, old hand at surviving and lauded as a genius-- of different sorts-- two lives over. A ninja’s body was his weapon, so even without tools or money-- as Harry currently was-- he could still work.

Just, obviously, not for a village. There were no other shinobi around, as he’d spend the last two months confirming.

And while he’d spent both lives working for one village or another, last reincarnation cycle, ninjas hardly hired other ninjas. Civilians in need of ninja  _ skills _ hired a ninja village to guard caravans or assassinate enemies or dispose of bandits, and the village paid the actual ninja a percentage.

So there was no village, but like lone or missing nin hard up for cash, he could offer his skills to rich civilians for the right price. Probably he wouldn’t be able to guard a caravan or escort anyone, such companies not having the right contacts for what, in another world, would be such a cheap mission, nor he, in this world, having enough knowledge of where he could profit from such missions.

Harry’d be willing to bet his right arm, however, that crime bosses and rich, cowardly assholes existed in any world. He’d just have to pull a Zabuza, grit his teeth and find this world’s version of Gato.

As Hokage, he’d once (been forced to) learn how supply and demand worked. If this was a civilian world, he’d be able to kill anyone, go anywhere, and without chakra? No one could stop him. He’d have his pick of jobs and his pick of the prices, because low supply and high demand was good for kids who had to eat.

The benefit of being the only shinobi in the world-- 

For a moment, his heart clenched, thinking of Konoha and  _ aching _ \--

\--was that he could turn down jobs that didn’t appeal to him. 

He had a brave new world to discover and who knows? He might, depending on what the hell was going on, find familiar faces along the way-- or at least some answers as to how he got here.

The streets of London greeted him, sunlight mulling through a thick layer of clouds, as he walked from the library to the apartment he’d ‘rented’.

Even with stealing food to eat-- and hypnotizing people to let empty apartments for free-- there were no words for how good it felt to be out in the world and out of the dark closet most of his, Harry’s, childhood had been shut up in.

He had a lot to figure out and a lot to do, but he was free to do it, and curious as all hell as to what this big, different world held in store.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The "Itachi has a tea shop and isn't a ninja" headcanon is one I adopted from Ramabear's Heaven/Konohell-verses, where Shisui and Kakashi jump dimensions to the canon!verse from one where Itach isn't a ninja and nothing hurts. It's also one of my favorite-- and so very fitting-- Itachi headcanons, hence it's peripheral mention.
> 
> For those of you who have read the comic "tea house" online, please note that by "Itachi runs a tea house" I definitely imagine Itachi bringing a cup of tea to his smug lips while surrounded by fancy whores. All the Uchiha come to his tea house and he's in a flowery apron glaring at them if they're rambunctious and smiling angelically at them when they behave from fear of his wrath (He is Mikoto's son, after all).


End file.
